Jul 2026· Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik / Agenda: Advancing Anglophone Studies· Vol 51· 0 citations
Abstract
English compound verbs are said to result predominantly from a morphological operation of conversion or desuffixation or, more rarely and ‘directly’, from an operation of compounding. In order to confirm the existence of ‘direct’ compound verbs in contemporary English and assess their relative weight among all compound verbs, a sample set of 250 units was obtained by automatically extracting recent verbal units containing a hyphen from the Oxford English Dictionary. Their dates of first attestation were then compared with those of similar nominal units, and those verbal units that were not clearly preceded by nominal occurrences were considered likely ‘direct’ compounds. They appear to constitute a sizable minority of the sample (almost one-fifth of all units). In a second step, in order to gain insight into the variety and quantitative distribution of the semantic relations attested in the sample, the internal semantic relation of each unit was established, applying, where possible, Pepper’s (2023) list of relations originally developed for binominal units. This showed that the verbal nature of the compounds leads to the presence of two additional, specific relations, MANNER and ATTRIBUTION, and that the morphological origin of the compound verb has an influence on the dominant categories of internal relations.
Conversion is a fertile resource of word-formation in English. Its degree of productivity is often reflected in the high incidence of converted lexemes in language resources, for instance dictionaries and corpora. With the main aim of surveying the alleged relationship between morphological productivity and frequency, this study examines English verbs derived by denominal conversion between 1990 and 2019. The analysis of a dataset compiled from the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) reveals a concentration of converted verbs within the lowest frequency bands. The scarcity of converted verbs in mid-to-high frequency bands suggests that, while morphologically viable, they rarely achieve broad lexical entrenchment. This underscores the often ephemeral nature of the output of highly productive word-formation processes, with many formations remaining marginal or specialized in use, contingent upon their semantic categorization. It is noteworthy that, while the OED documents a significant number of converted verbs, the COCA data indicates that many of these remain peripheral in discourse. The prominence of converted verbs in the OED’s lowest bands suggests their recognition without widespread usage, consistent with prior observations that conversion frequently yields nonce formations and contextdependent lexical items. The semantic distribution of converted verbs further elucidates their productivity and frequency patterns. Instrumental verbs dominate, reflecting technological influence, while performative verbs also show remarkable representation. Overall, the findings confirm that denominal conversion is a productive but predominantly low-frequency process, shaped by morphosyntactic and semantic constraints.
Jesús Fernández-Domínguez· Arbeiten aus Anglistik und A...· 0 citations
This study was motivated by the frequent use of sentences with the verb ada that require structural analysis, with the focus of the study directed toward the syntactic function of these sentences The data, consisting of 194 sentences composed by students in an academic context, were selected purposively and analyzed using a descriptive method based on Verhaar’s theory. The results reveal four constructions: N+Va, Va+N, N+Va+Num, and N+Va+N, with the Va+N construction being the most prevalent; verbs ada are always function as predicates and follow an inverted word order (P–S). These sentences are classified as simple and complex sentences with a variety of structural patterns. Furthermore, a shift in the category of the verb ada to an adverb was observed when it co-occurs with numerals, indicating its adaptability as an active element within numeral phrases, rather than merely a passive component, particularly in graded complex clause. This study demonstrates that the syntactic behavior of verbs ada constitutes a movement of verbs in occupying linguistic units at the syntactic level, namely the movement of verbs within grammatical units such as phrases, clauses, and sentences. The implications of these findings include up-to-date guidelines for teaching scientific sentence structure, analyzing academic discourse, and serving as a lexicographical reference to enrich grammatical information on word classes in monolingual Indonesian dictionaries.
Penelitian ini dilatarbelakangi oleh banyaknya penggunaan kalimat beverba ada yang memerlukan analisis struktural, dengan fokus kajian diarahkan pada fungsi sintaksis kalimat tersebut. Data berupa 194 kalimat yang disusun mahasiswa dalam konteks akademik dipilih secara purposif dan dianalisis menggunakan metode deskriptif dengan teori Verhaar. Hasil menunjukkan empat konstruksi: N+Va, Va+N, N+Va+Num, dan N+Va+N, yang didominasi konstruksi Va+N; verba ada selalu berfungsi sebagai predikat dan berpola inversi (P–S). Kalimat-kalimat tersebut terklasifikasi dalam kalimat tunggal dan majemuk bertingkat dengan variasi pola yang beragam. Selain itu, ditemukan pergeseran kategori verba ada menjadi adverbia ketika berdampingan dengan numeralia menunjukkan adaptabilitasnya sebagai unsur aktif dalam frasa numeral, bukan sekadar komponen pasif, terutama dalam klausa kompleks bertingkat. Penelitian ini menujukkan perilaku sintaktis verba ada merupakan gerak verba dalam menempati satuan bahasa pada tataran sintaksis, yakni pergerakan verba pada satuan gramatika frasa, klausa, maupun kalimat. Implikasi temuan ini meliputi panduan mutakhir dalam pengajaran struktur kalimat ilmiah, analisis wacana akademik, serta rujukan leksikografi untuk memperkaya informasi gramatikal kelas kata dalam kamus ekabahasa bahasa Indonesia.
Encep Kusumah, Nunung Sitaresmi, Rudi Adi Nugroho M.Pd. et al.· Tabasa Jurnal Bahasa Sastra...· 1 citation
This article presents a corpus-based approach toward a lexical typology of verbs in European languages, based on a comparison of the meanings of the most frequent verbs classified into semantic fields. The comparison is made in two steps. Among the twenty most frequent verbs, there is a set of grammatical verbs that top the list (with a few exceptions): ‘be’, ‘have’ and modals meaning ‘can’ and ‘must’. Among the lexical verbs, there are nine nuclear verbs with meanings that are distributed between the most basic verbal semantic fields (indicated within parentheses): ‘go’, ‘come’ (Motion); ‘give’, ‘take’ (Possession), ‘make’ (Production), ‘say’ (Verbal communication), ‘see’ (Perception), ‘know’ (Cognition), ‘want’ (Desire). Comparisons are made in two ways based on the rank order of the verbs according to descending frequency and according to a frequency measure, based on a logarithmic scale. As a second step, the comparison is extended to the 100 most frequent verbs. The result is compared to the inventories of simple verbs in some non-European languages with a very restricted number of such verbs. The frequency-based comparisons are complemented with the result of corpus-based contrastive studies of selected aspects of the semantic structure of the semantic fields to which the nuclear verbs belong.
Å. Viberg· Linguistic Typology at the C...· 0 citations
This study examines the four major word classes (viz. noun, verb, adjective and adverb) in Lohorung, a Kirat Rai (Tibeto-Burman) language of north-eastern Nepal, based on their semantic, syntactic, and morphological properties, based on Givón’s formal and functional approach. Data were collected through elicitation with native speakers and textual analyses and were analysed with reference to the author’s native-speaker intuition. The findings indicate that Lohorung exhibits prototypical nouns with their multiple features and non-prototypical nouns as well. Morphologically, nouns are marked by the specific affixes, <-ʈsi> encodes dual and <-i> encodes plural. Lohorung employs three types of classifiers, namely <-tsi> <-kɔ>, and <-pɑŋ/pɑ>. Verbs are clause-final and serve as main predicates, typical of Tibeto-Burman languages. Lohorung has three numbers and persons systems with clusivity. Manner adverbials may take , and some adverbs modify adjectives. This study concludes that the analysis of the four major word classes enhances the grammatical description of the Lohorung language and contributes to functional-typological research on lexical classification.
Diwas Rai· Journal of Indigenous Knowle...· 0 citations
Stress position in English words is well-known to be influenced by phonological, morphological, and (morpho)syntactic factors (esp. verbs vs. nouns). All these influences, however, are far from categorical, and very often stress varies from one word to another in a seemingly unpredictable manner. What is more, recent corpus-based work points to the relevance of opaque, i.e. etymological prefixes. It is, however, unclear why effects of opaque morphology should be productive synchronically. Moreover, there is an increasing body of research indicating that stress assignment works on the basis of lower-level information, i.e. analogy. In this paper we analyze the results of a pseudo-word experiment testing the production of trisyllabic verbs. Structural predictors tested in the analysis comprise syllable weight and prefixation (measuring the transparency of prefixes). To test analogy, we had a computational analogical model predict stress in the pseudo-words based on all verbs in the
Cambridge Pronouncing Dictionary
. Lexical support measures were then used as predictors alongside weight and prefixation in a mixed-effects logistic regression model. The results show that all three variables are significant predictors of main stress in the experimental data. Lexical support is strongly correlated with actual productions, but AML underpredicts some of participants’ preferences. These are, however, explained by syllable weight and transparency of the prefix in our regression model. We conclude that properties on different levels of representation are relevant for the prediction of stress position in English pseudo-verbs.
Prefixation is a morphological process which studies how morphemes are affixed in the beginning of their host words for either grammatical functions or for lexical expansion and derivation. This paper investigates aspects of the grammar of prefixation in English and Igbo Languages. It adopts a comparative theoretical framework, so as to identify the morphological similarities and difference in both languages. It also adopts the qualitative design, which gives the description of the data the way they are. The paper adopts both a primary and secondary methods of data collections. The primary data were basically from the native speaker’s competence, the researcher who is a speaker of the Igbo language supplied the necessary data. The secondary data were sourced from textual materials. The analysis shows grammatical and functional similarities and dissimilarities in both languages, as well derivative similarities and dissimilarities in both languages. Prefixes are used in both languages to derive new words, change word classes, but Igbo in additions realise grammatical functions with prefixes. The study of prefixation in both languages greatly reveals common universal principles of human language and at the same time, parametric variations in the languages, showing their uniqueness. The study concludes that prefixation in both languages are morphologically productive, being inflectional in the Igbo language; derivational flexible in both languages, and can as well perform different linguistic functions in both languages. The study notes the selective nature of the paper on instances of prefixation in both languages because of space, and thus, recommends an expanded investigation of the topic; and comparative investigation of other related morphological concepts, such as infixation, interfixation and suffixation in English and Igbo.
Okolo N Patrick, Florence Nne Agwu· World Journal of Advanced Re...· 0 citations
